If you have to go to Quincy Medical Center tomorrow, be prepared to cross a picket line. For the first time in a quarter-century, nurses in a Boston are hospital will strike, seeking to highlight what they call dire and unsafe patient conditions. Quincy’s 236 nurses will picket on Whitwell Street and at hospital entrances from 6 a.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday

By Jack Encarnacao

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Jack Encarnacao

Posted Apr. 10, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 10, 2013 at 10:06 AM

By Jack Encarnacao

Posted Apr. 10, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Apr 10, 2013 at 10:06 AM

QUINCY

» Social News

If you have to go to Quincy Medical Center on Thursday, be prepared to cross a picket line.

For the first time in 25 years, nurses at a Boston area hospital will strike on Thursday. Quincy Medical Center nurses say they are seeking to drive home to the public what they call dire and unsafe patient conditions in the hospital, a description hospital officials say is untrue.

The hospital’s 236 nurses will not work on Thursday, and the union representing them said most of the nurses will picket on Whitwell Street outside the hospital and at hospital entrances. The strike begins at 6 a.m. Thursday and ends at 6 a.m. Friday.

At 6 a.m., all nurses working in the hospital will gather floor-by-floor and walk out together to join supporters, the union said. A rally is set for noon.

They will be joined by colleagues from other hospitals owned by Steward Health Care, including Morton Hospital in Taunton and Merrimack Valley Hospital in Haverhill.

“We don’t think this is going to effect the hospital financially,” Paula Ryan, a Quincy Medical nurse and chair of the local bargaining unit, said of the strike. “What we really want is the community to be aware. We want the hospital to be viable, and we want to give the best care we can.”

Steward spokesman Christopher Murphy said the hospital will be sufficiently covered, but declined to specify from where the replacements will come.

“Every clinician on site will be an experienced, qualified, licensed professional,” he said. “The hospital is a vital access point for people who need healthcare, and the hospital is also private property. Any patient who needs care will have free and unimpeded access to all of the hospital entrances.”

The Quincy Medical Center nurses’ contract expired in 2010. A 12-plus hour session with a mediator on Monday was not successful.

Quincy Medical Center president Daniel Knell sent a letter to employees Tuesday which intimated that the hospital, which he said is losing $1 million per month, can’t afford the union’s financial proposal.

“It is not feasible to continue to borrow money every week to make payroll,” Knell wrote. “The issue is what we can afford ... If I committed to the cost structure I would like to provide, Quincy Medical Center could cease to exist.”

Murphy, the Steward spokesman, said pay for nurses at Quincy Medical Center tops out at $52-an-hour, and that 80 percent of the hospital’s nurses have reached that step. Nurses said they gave back wages and benefits in their most recent contract.

Before making final strike preparations, nurses participated in a public meeting Tuesday morning at United Methodist Church in Wollaston. The hearing was called by the Massachusetts Workers’ Rights Board, an arm of the union advocacy group Jobs With Justice.

Page 2 of 2 - “It’s the nurses, it’s all those who work in healthcare who don’t expect to get rich off it ... we are all committed to turning this around,” said Sandy Eaton, a retired Quincy Medical Center nurse and member of the Massachusetts Nurses Association board. “At the bargaining table, the nurses have been told that quality drives volume. Well, where’s the quality in bunking people for hours and hours and hours in an emergency room?”

Nurses said that the emergency department has been understaffed and wait times have increased since a medical surgical unit was closed and 30 nurses were laid off last month.

Emergency room nurse Stacey McEachern cited two instances last month, on March 6 and March 12, when she said there were two nurses scheduled to work in the emergency department from 3 to 7 a.m.

McEachern said she asked a manager on one of those days what the hospital would do if a serious case came into the emergency room that night, one that required the attention of two nurses.

“In front of his own colleagues, he knocked on the table and said, ‘We’re just going to knock on wood that that doesn’t happen,’” she said.

Steward was launched by private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management in 2010 to buy the six hospitals in the Caritas Christi System. That group includes Norwood Hospital, Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton. Steward also owns Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton and Morton Hospital in Taunton.